Meryl Streep Scholarships

Streep Scholarships

Actress Meryl Streep will leave a lasting legacy when she visits UMass Lowell for the Chancellor’s Speaker Series, as she is set to establish two scholarship funds for UMass Lowell students. The scholarships will be endowed with all net proceeds from her appearance at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell. All proceeds from an online raffle for autographed director's chair will also benefit the scholarships.

The new Meryl Streep Endowed Scholarship Fund will assist outstanding UMass Lowell English majors with the cost of their education. The Joan Hertzberg Endowed Scholarship, also to be established by Streep, will support students who excel in math as Hertzberg did. A former classmate of Streep’s at Vassar College, Hertzberg transferred to Williams College where she was the valedictorian of the college’s first graduating class that included women. Hertzberg, who earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had a successful career as a therapist, author and teacher in the San Francisco area before her death in 2013.

Streep’s appearance – co-sponsored by the UMass Lowell English Department’s Theatre Arts Program and the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences – is the second in the Chancellor’s Speaker Series. The first event in the series featured author Stephen King and raised approximately $100,000 for a new scholarship fund King established for UMass Lowell students. Streep’s appearance is expected to raise in excess of $100,000 for her two scholarship funds.